


Princess Charming

by vintageprayers



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dragons, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 03:35:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5651083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vintageprayers/pseuds/vintageprayers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fairy tales for the modern girl living in New York City after The Incident and that Other Incident, and then that Thing With The Dragons that no one has come up with a pithy name for yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Maleficent the Chastity Belt

Don’t believe anything Disney or Dreamworks tells you about having a pet dragon. Dragons are greedy, nosy, _annoying_ little assholes who want to destroy your home and your personal life and probably your will to live. Also you can’t use hairspray if you have a pet dragon. Just FYI, in case you ever plan on styling your hair ever again. Since, you know, they will _literally set you on fire._

Darcy is not just saying this because Maleficent is currently hissing and coughing out pathetic bursts of smoke at Riley, the guy she met at the coffee shop and who is here to take her on what would probably be a very nice date if he would stop hiding behind the doorframe. 

“She’s normally really friendly!” Darcy calls out to him as she pushes Mal back with her knee. Mal hiccups out a little ball of orange flame and scowls at Darcy. The dragon, who has now snaked her head between Darcy’s knees and is continuing to hiss at the _clearly_ dangerous intruder, has a line of raised scales on her back. Like a scared, stupid cat, Darcy thinks. 

“Yeah, uh, I think -” he starts, and then stops when Mal puffs out another cloud of smoke through her nose. Darcy can just barely see his nose past the edge of the door and it’s disappearing fast. “I just remembered I have a really urgent thing!” he says quickly, and then his nose is gone, and so is he.

Darcy slams the door and Mal backs up quick and sits with a proud jerk of her chin toward the jar of treats on the table where Darcy normally keeps her purse. She wants to be rewarded for protecting Darcy from a good time. Darcy sighs and drops her bag down, mentally giving up on the idea of a social life. She stares down at her nice black flats (as opposed to the not-nice ones, which can barely be considered footwear at this point) before toeing them off.

Mal whines and stares pointedly at the jar.

“You’re the worst,” Darcy says, but she pulls out a biscuit anyways, holding it a few inches from Mal’s face. “ _Leave it_ ,” she says sternly, and Mal straightens her neck, nearly quivering with excitement. Darcy counts five flicks of Mal’s tail back and forth on the floor before she shakes her hand, giving Mal the signal to gently pull the biscuit from her fingers.

She might be the rudest pet on the planet, but she at least has _some_ manners.

“So what was wrong with this guy, oh evil one?” Darcy asks as she makes her way back through her apartment, stripping off her date clothes as she goes. Mal says nothing, like always, and curls up on the couch with her treat.

“Off,” Darcy commands from the hallway. “Ugh, _Mal_ , you’re gonna get crumbs everywhere, _off_.”

Mal snorts and curls even tighter, like being smaller will fix the issue. Darcy returns to the living room in her sweats and slippers and sits next to her, scooching over until she forces the dragon to plop onto the floor. Mal grumbles but otherwise puts up with it, which is only fair considering everything Darcy puts up with.

In the three months since Darcy let Maleficent move in to her apartment, only one other person has passed her strict standards, and it’s only because he always comes with giant bags of biscuits and jerky and other things that make her apartment smell like a pet store. Darcy refuses to believe that Mal actually likes Tony Stark for his personality. No. It’s because he bribes her, plain and simple. Everyone else gets the fire and brimstone treatment, from Jane to Erik to Thor himself, which really proves to Darcy that Mal isn’t so much a good judge of character as she’s a good judge of snacks. 

She keeps the biscuits by the door so that she can stealthily hand them over to anyone who comes by and then they can give them to Mal, thus proving that they are worthy of entering Darcy’s apartment, but Mal just knows that it’s a trick and yeah, she’ll take the offered biscuit, but then she’ll go back to snarling and snorting and being a jerk. 

It’s actually really convenient sometimes, like when the Jehovah’s Witnesses come by, but mostly it’s a pain the ass. Just like Mal. 

Darcy tries to teach her how to recognize friends – mostly by saying _no, that’s a **friend** _ every time they see someone she likes – but so far Mal only recognizes three types of people: Darcy (who must be defended at all costs), Tony (who is an unfortunate side effect of the treats), and the godforsaken enemies who have come to invade her castle and must be snarled at and ineffectually threatened with puffs of smoke and occasional flames that barely flick out past her nose. 

That’s probably the saddest thing about Mal, and the only reason Darcy’s been allowed to keep her: Mal, the pathetic thing that she is, is a runt with the biggest Napoleon complex of all time. Unlike the towering full-grown dragons that managed to slip by Heimdall and journey over to Midgard on the sparkly rainbow bridge of space travel, Mal only just reaches Darcy’s hip and her underdeveloped glands mean she can’t really throw flames as much as she can sort of gently toss them, like a baby trying to pitch a softball. 

It doesn’t keep her from trying though, and as annoying as it is, Darcy can’t help but love her for it. 

She sighs again and stares down at her stupid pet. 

“You’re the worst,” she repeats. Mal finishes her treat and hops back up onto the couch, shoving her head under Darcy’s palm for scritches.


	2. Frickin' Dragons from Outer Space

It’s three in the morning and someone has taken up Darcy’s spot on the bed. She got up to go to the bathroom not five minutes ago, and even though it’s dark in her bedroom, she could see Mal asleep, wound tightly around her favorite plush toy in her own bed on the floor. Darcy had to buy one of those dog beds for Great Danes – the kind that’s basically a couch in its own right – and Mal fits in it perfectly. It is _Mal’s bed_. The bed that exists for Mal’s exclusive use. Darcy spent over a hundred bucks on it, and she made sure it was the best bed ever. It has plenty of crevices for hiding whatever Mal steals, it’s full of super soft stuffing, and it’s covered in this pseudo velvet fabric that is more lux than Darcy’s own sheets.

Mal is now spread across all of Darcy’s pillows, pretending to be fast asleep, with her big snout stuck under a blanket and one wing ever so casually draped over the entirety of the mattress. 

Somehow she actually gets bigger when there’s a mattress involved. It’s like Asgardian magic or something. 

Darcy groans and stomps her foot and makes a sound that can only really be called whining because she only got home from work a couple of hours ago and she’s freaking _exhausted_ and her bed has been taken over by an animal that shouldn’t even exist on this _planet_ , never mind in her bed. 

“MAL,” she says in her most threatening voice. Mal does nothing, but Darcy swears she can hear her snuffle under the blanket. “ _Maleficent_ ,” she intones darkly, “if you don’t move _right now_ -”

Darcy closes her eyes tightly when her threat is interrupted by her phone’s ring tone. “You are so lucky,” she mutters, and Mal’s shoulders shimmy a little as she makes herself more comfortable in Darcy’s bed.

“Yes, hello, is the world ending?” she says after she lifts the phone to her ear. “Wait, Jane, what? ---- okay, _Jane_ \---- Seriously? ---- But I just got _home_ \---- ” She scowls as she listens to Jane explain the super completely dire situation that demands Darcy’s presence, but after a few minutes of Jane explaining, she switches her focus to prodding Mal’s side where’s she’s ticklish. “Jane, darling, baby, light of my life,” she interrupts, lifting her hand quickly when Mal goes to nip at her fingers, “I will be there in thirty minutes but _only_ if you provide snacks.” Mal looks up at her with wide eyes and Darcy makes a face. _Not for you_ she mouths. “And coffee,” she continues to Jane.

Darcy secretly loves all-nighters. There’s something about working all night and that sweet-spot of sleep deprivation and comradery that brings her joy. She will absolutely never admit this to Jane, though, because pretending to be miserable means Jane feels obligated to pay for food. Plus, it’s winter, so Darcy can just put on a sweater and a big coat and no one on the subway will even know that she’s wearing Hanukah-themed pajamas in February. Win-win. She glances over at Mal, who is busy chewing on her nails. Win-win-win, since Mal gets to keep the bed. 

“I’m leaving, you big jerk,” she tells Mal. “You stole my bed and now I’m leaving. Goodbye,” she says with finality. 

Mal tilts her head at _goodbye_ and whines a little. 

“Yeah,” Darcy says. “You feel bad now, don’t you?” Darcy goes about putting on more layers and Mal watches her with her sad reptilian eyes. When she shoves her feet into her boots Mal launches herself off the bed and puts herself between Darcy and the door. 

“I’m going out into the great big world and leaving you behind,” she says dramatically, shoving her knee into Mal’s side and pushing her away from the door so she can swing it open and walk confidently down the hallway. “Enjoy my bed, you ungrateful cretin!” she says over her shoulder, just in time to see a blur of shimmering black and gold as Mal collides with her shins, nearly tipping Darcy over. 

She rolls her eyes and drops down to her butt to let her stupid pet climb all over her, listening to Mal snorting and huffing and acting like the world is ending. Eventually Mal ends up basically in her lap, with her thin wings wrapped around Darcy and her snout buried in her armpit. 

“I’ll be back soon,” Darcy soothes, using her _stupid dragon is being clingy_ voice. Mal snuffles and rearranges herself until she’s stepping on Darcy’s thigh and clawing at her shoulder and Darcy gently shoves her off. “Be good,” she says when she stands up. “Don’t hoard any of the wires, I need those.” 

She gives her a final scratch under her chin and tries not to feel bad when she locks the apartment door behind her. 

When she shuffles in to the building where Jane keeps half of her broken down science stuff, the security guard barely nods at her before turning back to whatever’s on his tiny television. She barely nods back, because while coffee is waiting for her, it’s not actually in her presence yet and she’s still a little grumpy. 

She takes the elevator down to the lower lower _lower_ basement level and swipes her keycard over a panel that lets her into the lab, which is currently filled with stars and planets and space dust. 

Darcy blinks. “Jane?” 

“Darcy! Get over here and look!” Jane exclaims from somewhere behind a row of computers. 

Darcy blinks again, rubs her scarf over her glasses, puts them back on and realizes that what’s she’s looking at isn’t the entirety of space crammed into Jane’s basement-level bunker, but rather a projection coming from a whirring machine. Which is good – she’s really not up for that kind of all-nighter. _We broke space and time_ is only fun when she’s more awake. 

She finds Jane flat on her back on the dusty floor, staring up at the projected cosmos and trying to make notes on a legal pad she has propped up on a stack of books. Darcy sits cross-legged next to her and picks up Jane’s coffee mug, testing it for warmth before taking a giant gulp. 

“What’s up with space, Janey?” 

Jane points up at the projected stars, a goofy smile on her face. “That comet is from Vanaheim,” she says dreamily. 

Darcy nods and then frowns. “Wait, _what_.” She peers back up at the ceiling and watches a tiny point of light moving at a glacial speed. 

Jane settles back, folding her hands behind her head. “I was _right_.” 

“How do you - _Vanaheim_? Are you sure?” 

“Mmhmm,” Jane hums. “It’s the Convergence – it’s having…” Jane lifts her hands to wave them in the air and pull them apart from each other. “Aftershocks. Ripples, sort of.” 

“Shouldn’t we be like …freaking out?” Darcy asks. 

Jane shrugs half-heartedly. “Que sera.” 

Darcy frowns again. “Doris Day is not the answer here, Janey.” 

Jane doesn’t take her eyes off the ceiling. “It’s more than a million light-years away from us. But I was _right_.” She shifts so she can look Darcy in the eye. “I’m going to send the CfA a postcard that just says _Fuck you, I was right_.” 

“Draw it in crayon,” Darcy advises and then pauses. “Wait – if that’s a comet from Vanaheim, then –” 

Jane hums in agreement. “Yup.” 

“So it wasn’t the Bridge-” 

“Nope.” 

“ _Woah_ ,” Darcy says, collapsing back to lie down on the floor next to Jane, making sure to keep the coffee upright and cradled against her chest. “So Frigga and Mal could have been neighbors. That’s so _cool_.” 

Jane hums again and bats Darcy’s arm. Darcy hands over the coffee. 

“Frickin’ dragons from outer space,” Darcy says, not bothering to hide the awe in her voice. 

“Indeed.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very serious work of fiction of great import. Not Crack At All.


End file.
